


Mad, bad, and dangerous to know

by lulahbelle



Category: 18th & 19th Century CE RPF, Arts & Sciences RPF, Gothic (1986)
Genre: Bloodplay, Byron the reluctant dom, Drug Addiction, Eccentricity, Knifeplay, M/M, Mild powerplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-29
Updated: 2012-06-29
Packaged: 2017-11-08 20:21:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/447147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulahbelle/pseuds/lulahbelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote this aaaaaaaaages ago for electricwitch on livejournal but I was always peversely fond of it so I though I would post it here.</p><p>This is technically fanfic for the demented spectacle that is Ken Russel's 1986 film Gothic but as the characters in the piece were actually real life figures I suppose that it could be considered RPF too if you squinted. The physicality of Byron and Shelley is based on the actors, Gabriel Byrne and Julian Sands, who played them in the film.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Mad, bad, and dangerous to know

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this aaaaaaaaages ago for electricwitch on livejournal but I was always peversely fond of it so I though I would post it here.
> 
> This is technically fanfic for the demented spectacle that is Ken Russel's 1986 film Gothic but as the characters in the piece were actually real life figures I suppose that it could be considered RPF too if you squinted. The physicality of Byron and Shelley is based on the actors, Gabriel Byrne and Julian Sands, who played them in the film.

Lord Byron was a man with little respect for the distinction others made between barnyard animal and pet. Hence Percy Shelley, his guest for the weekend, was awoken at dawn, by the sound of the resident cockerel crowing not from fields yonder, but from a perch it had taken up on the wooden bed frame above his head. 

The bird, itself unconcerned by being so dysfunctionally close to man, gave uninhibited performance, creating a sound to shatter nerves. Ending at once any thoughts Shelley might have had of slumbering on.

Reluctantly engaging thought to form Shelley realised that as Byron was not a creature seen much before midday he would have to find something to do alone until such time. 

Possessed of an easily stimulated and thus full, mind, he decided to go off to the grounds of the estate to examine his thoughts and once suitably attired did just that.

*

As Shelley turned out around a corner onto the poorly maintained topiary that comprised Byron's ancestral gardens, he saw the flash of a familiar deep Burgundy frock coat.

Byron.

Not only was he up, earlier than usual, but he was also abroad.

Shelley wondered briefly if it was really as early as he'd supposed.

The two friends met eyesights. Byron's dark and muddy blue to an infinitely purer shade of the colour from Shelley, and in the distance came the dramatic sound of horse hooves pitching themselves at top speed away over the gravel of the driveway.

Shelley turned to the sound. 

Byron drawled, “Fencing teacher.”

Upon looking again to Byron, Shelley noticed that the upper portion of his shirt had been cut across to the flesh in a series of thin slashes and furthermore that the interruptions in fabric were outlined in blood.

"You're bleeding."

"Oh yes he always cuts me. He says it is to give me the incentive to learn, but I think he is too afraid of me to teach in such a manner. He always departs so quickly afterwards. I think it is because he thinks that if he lingers I may be tempted to avenge my injury by buggering the senses from him."

Shelley laughed and said impersonating charm. "Well there are times when a fencing foil is simply not adequate."

Byron was deeply amused by Shelley's refusal to be scandalised, and more than ever interested by its edges.

"Indeed. Although I suppose that depriving him of his sight would prevent him from reading the verse I would compose about the deed if I did do it, and if I had also removed his hearing he couldn't listen to it aloud either. Pointless. Perhaps I could settle for taking one sense? One of the lesser perhaps, smell, or taste?" Byron laughed to himself. "The Devil knows I have practice with the last".

"So I have heard." Shelley replied, for it couldn't be escaped, even by one who had as tenuous a grip on society as he, that Byron had treated a great many distinguished women in a way that was considered by most people to be dishonourable.

Hearing a great many things unsaid and unintended from his friend, Byron's mood on the issue turned at once from playful to defensively terse.

"Now Shiloh I cannot be held accountable for everything demented girls do whilst supposing my possession of them can I?"

"I said nothing in judgement my dear friend." Shelley asserted desperately. A committed social revolutionary he was a little afraid that maybe he had sounded like one of the many who rejected Byron on the advice of outdated, useless values and standards of behaviour.

Warming to this worry in Shelley's voice, Byron continued to attack.

"No, but your inner disapproval clanks like machinery, obscenely dull and modern."

This was so far the exaggerated opposite from his own attitude that it quite annoyed Shelley. 

"One moment to you I am the perfect gospel, the beautiful child of a new age, now I am merely disloyal and tedious!"

Having elicited a spirited display of passion from him, Byron laughed.

"Oh Shiloh, poor, exasperated, dear. Calm yourself. I know full well your worthy spirit, but there is nothing more splendid on earth than rejecting that which you admire. Freedom is what we all should live for."

Confused by the switch to affection from aggression that Byron seemed to have perfected, Shelley attempted to deny his own previous distemper.

"This why I was pretending to be upset with you."

Byron was moved immediately to parody Shelley's directly turncoating moods.

"Likewise I am a poseur for I knew you didn't mind. It's the light out here you see, it shows you up beautifully."

And it did, for Byron viewed the way that Shelley detected nothing from this new spate of mocking besides the risk of a compliment with an amused inevitability. A peace of sorts, though uneasy, was reached between them. Both men had been the subject of much scrutiny from the world and for a time it seemed that the energy to inflict it passed away. Byron gathered himself close to his friend, so close that they were touching about the chest, uncaring for the possible injury to his wound or the transfer of blood between their clothing.

Shelley, moist eyes watching, allowed him to.

Byron placed his fingertips on Shelley's forehead and smoothed over the stray blonde curls decorating his hairline, scarcely able to believe that something so precious dwelt there at all, for the discovery was too perfect. Shelley was a little like a cherub in his appearance. But far from an insipid, benign sort of beauty, his loveliness was the result of an active, energetic heart. Of course he was far too concerned with things Byron couldn't care about but he was somehow admirable with it.

He was also most radiant in this current, strategic, peace, which remained immense about him, even as Byron, compelled, found his soft cheek with his mouth. When he pulled back to a point where the other's sky blue irises could be seen again, there was no noise of will in his companion's eyes, only the smoothest regard about his essence. Byron felt a shiver of great inferiority before the other creature in his elegant sparseness of reaction, and it was not for the first time.

Hands skated to Shelley's waist, kneading and squeezing softly, with fingertips, the hinted body beneath his flowing, overlarge formal shirt. It was the sinewy muscular form of a man who worked at life, despite growing up cossetted amongst those who didn't bother. Byron's mouth watered at the feel of him and gradually drew itself in nearness to his again. His tongue crept into contact with the ensuing, responsive motion of Shelley's mouth, which gradually came with the weight of his entire body behind it.

It was strangely repetitive and tiring and not enough for Byron. The need to challenge his friend, to needle him wouldn't die, even amidst his tender hearted appraisal of him. In fact Byron felt that this was how he conveyed his attraction.

"You seem reluctant Shiloh, does it frighten you?"

Byron asked, he knew well the annoyed response that this false accusation would provoke from Shelley, a man who always felt the need to be so free on the concept of sex and proud of his sexual response. Byron was not at all in dread, he only hoped that Shelley would be upset enough for him to get something truly exciting from it, to give him something to lose himself to.

"Frightened?" Shelley laughed, with little actual amusement. "You think you're so outrageous out here, with your sin and buggery, but they are concepts as old as time itself. There is nothing to be feared within you."

"Ah that's it Shiloh! Fight me!" Byron roared in amusement.

"You want a disagreement?"

"Resistance Shelley! In that girlish voice of yours if you would be so kind."

Byron hoped this would enrage him, if he had caught him on a moodier day it would have, but today it did nothing like it, today it only aroused his sense of fun.

"Would that I were a girl, for I would instantaneously turn into another creature like Caroline Lamb.

"You could not. For even as a female you would outshine that monstrosity on the level of lunacy. You already outshine her on the level of loveliness."

Byron found that he grovelled, wishing to feel humiliation in the depths of his passion for the man, or wanting to be forced to feel it, to feel something. To this end Shelley was initially promising.

"The world doesn't need your compliments, it needs your mind."

Byron watched him, edging into a peculiar impatience as he realised that the other man was, as others had been before, too afraid to pursue his minute moment of disgust for him. Byron's personal desire to submit after the un satisfyingly dominant thrashing he'd received at fencing wanted to latch upon this disgust. He wanted his own response to be one of weakness but he realised in the other's petulant precociousness that he was entirely unwilling to donate it to this creature. Shelley was little less than a boy really, it was Shelley who should be subsumed in their match.

"Would you prefer my disgust Shiloh?"

"So long as it is intelligent I will take ladles of anything."

"Go to the house then. I have whips up there...It hurts less than when you were a child you know."

Now that he considered it Byron found he wanted to whip Shelley until he was raw, until he was half a person with nought of will. Byron often switched like this between intense lust to an urge to obliterate, this, truth be told, was why he avoided his ladies the moment he had ensnared them. They did, some of them, so complain about his violence of attitude, to say nothing of their usually even stronger disagreement to the mere possibility of his inflicting love marks upon their body.

Shelley on the other hand seemed to consider the proposition logically, clearly by nature and intelligence unable to reject it entirely out of hand, but then he replied, with a surface skein of sorrow that it should be so.

"I think my flesh is too soft."

"Lies. You were built in sturdier mode than you imagine. You could take some punishment. For instance." He stepped from Shelley until he stood a foot apart from him and there he drew his knife. The shocking noise of metal against metal. Shelley smiled in amusement but it was too tight around the cheeks and not light enough in the eyes which were locked solidly upon the exposed blade.

Back Byron went and took up a fighting stance that leaned heavily on his good leg. This agility was enough to distract Shelley, who was used to him shuffling around. Shelley lifted his hand in ludicrous defence. At this Byron with a flash of the razor sharp blade, a thin slit of silver, slashed the back of his hand. It took little of a press to quite deeply transgress the flesh. Blood pooled and ran quickly down Shelley's ring finger, slipping in plops to invisibility in the grass.

Byron threw the sword to their side, discarded. Then he knelt and taking Shelley's hand, dragging himself closer by the grip, sank his mouth around his finger, sucking the line of escape for the blood, eyes all the while fixed heavily upon Shelley's. Then, supporting his hand all the while, head bent, Byron licked up the finger to the source, licking and sucking the brief wound and it's more copious salt and metal onto his tastebuds, finding everything about the experience arousing. From the flavour of Shelley's life force, the tenseness in his arm as felt through his hand, his compensatory attempts to loosen these muscles to appear calm to the embrace of his friend's tongue.

Here he felt he was finally challenging the other man. Finally testing Shelley's intense sense of tolerance and acceptance of life experience. Byron didn't want to find the other lacking, but had to admit that it thrilled him to imagine that Shelley might seize in disgust and refusal. Shelley's other hand instead scrabbled into Byron's hair, deep at his waved roots, wanting for something to cling to prove that he could still move beneath the immobilising power of his pleasure. Byron could hear the sing songing relaxing and tensing waves of his thoughts through his murmurs and whispers, through the harsh gulp and tensed gripping fingers, as he dug his tongue into the wound to milk that which had been slowly healing to a stop.

Shelley finally grabbed at Byron's lapel and hand entangled, lightly pushed against him. Byron fell back on his heels, eyes never leaving Shelley's face.

"Now did that hurt or did it touch you in an entirely seperate place."

"The latter." Shelley decided breathless.

"And where is your softness now Shiloh?"

"On it's knees begging for it's life." Shelley smiled widely as he said this, energised by the assault it seemed.

Byron couldn't resist.

"Are you sure it's not begging to be killed? I know from personal experience how the two cries can intermingle."

Byron felt the thrill of demonism, it's freedom in a lusty punch, a seizure of being, that he knew now that he couldn't relinquish. It was only whilst intimating the most appalling things, the most salient of risks to an intimate and receiving their disgust, their terror, their rejection that he felt anything like a joy in life.

It was entirely agreeable.

Shelley looked into his eyes, face shining underneath all that tumbling pale hair and briefly his mouth twisted in a spark of reluctance. Byron smiled all the while, imagining that he must look only half as insane as he felt, he could imagine his own lips soft and vulnerable as was his inheritance, smeared slightly with the triumph of his seduction.

Then as if he were any run of the mill lady, Shelley was suddenly clutching his own bleeding hand with the healthy one. Holding the wound into his cuff, staunching it's lessening flow with the fabric. Shelley was finally upon his surface as he was inside.

Afraid and suspicious at the control the other man held over his body.

"These are beautiful gardens. You don't deserve such beauty." Shelley said ludicrously changing the subject.

Byron adored that he could repulse even the most determinedly licentious of people.

"Then that settles it. Of all of your senses I shall fuck your sight from you first!".

Knowing his attempt to distract from his friend's lust had failed entirely, Shelley laughed at that despite a certain quiver. He had not the slightest clue what to say to extricate himself, but larger than this was a confusion as to whether he had the desire not to see Byron's wickedness. Byron smiled his dark smile and continued mocking. Slipping behind him he seized the man strongly by the shoulders then leant to whisper in his ears.

"If you are doing a property inspection. Then you should really see the inside of my wardrobe, where my whips are. You should see the close up of a pillow on my bed, the inside of your own pleasure."

Byron felt his own entire dominance, it was all again too easy, as if there were not one of the minds of an age beneath him but a quivering schoolboy impressed by all that he ought not to be. Percy's tight body swayed in confusion to and away and returned closer each time. Byron reached out to grab a firm hand around his waist again. He swooped in for a kiss this time, focusing this attack on the man's neck. The centre of him, where his heart beat warm and welcoming against the mouth. It overwhelmed.

"There are naughtier boys than you. I've always though you're so mired in the revolution that you've neglected the truly revolutionary."

Byron grabbed Shelley, a mound of his white blonde hair wound through his fingers. Dragging his ear close to his kissing mouth without Shelley's struggle in the slightest, Byron felt powerful and passed a proprietry, grabbing hand over what he noticed was an impressive erection already for an organ hitherto untouched. In this he felt his own worth and Shelley's all so apparently.

Tugging Shelley gently and alternately harshly, entirely according to the energy of his own arousal, Byron thrust his own erection violently, threateningly against Shelley's backside.

___

Not long later Shelley, distressed and out of breath insisted.

"I'm close."

"You're not even at the distance to spit at the things I can make you feel." Byron growled at him.

Shelley looked around to him, hard in the eyes at this and it was clear that as those frightened eyes then lisped helplessly closed in orgasm that he believed every word. In joyous response to the power of causing the exquisite rigidity and gradual flowing looseness of Shelley's lithe muscles that followed, Byron bit hard at his ear lobe, only just able to resist the urge to clamp his jaw down locked around it. Wanting desperately to sever it in revenge for how unbearably beautiful he found the ecstasy face of it's owner.

Mindless on the spike of pain and orgasm Shelley shivered.

"Goodness."

It made Byron furious.

"People like you always turn there, don't you, despite any initial promise you may have had. "

It was here that Byron, having no compunctions further against really reigning over Shelley, began to drag down the back of his trousers.

*

Byron stared at Shelley, the smirk on his face turning self consciously spiteful for just a second at the fact that Shelley's eyes could now no longer meet his.

Sniffing Shelley reset his trousers and asked, as if he wasn't actually interested in the answer.

"Do you have laudanum?"

Byron reached out to him, encircling his chin in the softest of touches, forcing his eyes upwards and kissing him, whispering into his mouth.

"A fresh supply in the house especially for your visit. Never doubt my love for you Shiloh."

For Byron did find that he loved Shelley.

"How could I?" Shelley said clearly gravely ashamed of himself for returning the kiss.

"Well indeed." Byron said holding him closely in his arms briefly before vehemently pushing him away.


End file.
